Thankfully, Opera has finally released version 10.52 and its claims of being faster seems to be born out. Pages definitely seem to load quicker, scrolling seems smoother and the overall fit & finish just seems to be so much more polished.

The latest Opera, of course, still has all of the great features found in the previous version, such as its Visual Tabs, Opera Link, Opera's Turbo feature, and my favorite - Opera's Speed Dial. Other new features include:

Opera includes industry leading support for Web standards such as HTML 5, SVG and JavaScript.

Enhanced platform integration on Windows and Mac means that Opera looks and works better than ever on your operating system.

Along with a unified toolbar, Opera now uses the Cocoa and Core Text frameworks for improved performance and a native Mac OS look and feel.

Our improved dialogs will not get in your way or interrupt you. You can now switch between different pages without having to clear prompts first.

Searching is easier than ever, with Web search integrated right in the address field. You can also find pages from your history and bookmarks, as you type.

Displaying pages in the size you want is smoother than ever, with a new zoom slider in the status bar.

Rest assured that browsing stays personal with private browsing. Once you close a private tab or window, the data from that session is removed from the browser without a trace.

Of course, I've only just downloaded and used the newer version for a wee bit now, so I won't go into the technical side so much, but their claims of being the fastest browser on earth seems to be born out the more that I use it. Opera also claims that it's easy to use, safer and more secure, as well as being more innovative and powerful. Well, as I said, I've only been using it for the briefest of time, but I'm really liking what I see so far, and from what I can tell from my brief use is that Opera 10 is looking like its probably going to continue to remain my default browser on my Macs for the foreseeable future.

So, is Opera 10.52 really the fastest browser on earth, maybe even the best browser?

Well, in conclusion, I'm not really that sure of yet, but it sure definitely does feel like it, so whether your a Mac user or a Windows user, this is one wickedly fast browser that you should download and at least take out for a test browse. The newest Opera may not be perfect, no browser really is, of course, but its definitely, based on my own personal experience with both the previous and, as well, the newer version, I'm willing to bet that your probably going to love this great piece of kit just as much as I do.